Hoodlums planning to snatch BVAS wasting their time, says INEC

With less than 15 days to the general elections Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has said politicians planning to hire thugs to snatch Bimodal Voter Registration Systems, (BVAS) and manipulate the process were simply wasting their time.

The commission said BVAS snatched on election day by thugs would be deactivated.

INEC’s Deputy Director of Information and Communications Technology, (ICT), Lawrence Bayode, stated this on Channels Television’s special election programme on Wednesday.

Bayode who demonstrated how election results will be uploaded using the BVAS machine said the commission has a system meant to deactivate any BVAS that is snatched.

“If a BVAS is snatched, we already have a system in place that can deactivate that particular BVAS. Hoodlums cannot take over the accreditation process because the device is designed to push the accredited voters to the back end,” he stated.

According to Bayode, if the thugs take the device to other places where they will manipulate the data on the device, the Presiding Officer, PO of the polling unit will report the incident.

“If such a thing happens, the PO reports and from the back-end, that device is deactivated so that the person who took away that device will not be able to do anything with the device,” he added.

He disclosed that accreditation figures and results will now be transmitted simultaneously on election day, adding that such simultaneous transmission would ensure the figures correlate.